


trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat

by psychictantrums



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Ghost!Billy, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Slow Burn, Someone stop me, THERE WILL BE SEXY TIMES WITH A GHOST AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT, and steves gonna love it because he's too dumb not to, basically billy is gonna haunt the shit out of steve, i ain't gonna answer ya cuz you obviously shouldn't be reading fic since you obviously can't read, im warning you now so if you comment about it later, like at all. no shit does he remember so this is gonna be a fucking, oh and also Billy doesn't remember shit, steve harrington will wear a crop top because I said so, unfortunately follows canon because i am a fucking asshole, why do I do these things?, you know you don't have to read
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-06-26 00:59:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19757338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychictantrums/pseuds/psychictantrums
Summary: Billy is dead. Steve is dumb. Sometimes the two things overlap in just the right way to make things a little easier on both of them.With nowhere else to go and no recollection of what had happened, Billy finds a house that already has a ghost or two and figures one more can't hurt someone who's already haunted so he stays in the shadows of Steve's house.aka Billy's a ghost and Steve is totally fucking haunted.





	1. afterlife

Billy woke up with a gasp. 

It was dark and he was alone in the woods. He didn’t know how he got there or what he was doing or how long he had been there. It seemed like it should’ve been cold. He could see the leaves blowing in the wind. He knew he should feel it. He only had a wife beater on. He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t feel the wind he knew was blowing. Nothing was making any sense.

He knew there were things he should remember. Like where these woods were that he was in. It didn’t look like California. There wasn’t a single redwood in sight and he was pretty sure he saw a pine tree in the distance. A fucking pine tree? Where the fuck was he?

He kept walking and walking and walking, passing tree after tree after tree and nothing looked familiar. Not even for a second. It got light outside and then dark again. Maybe two days? Honestly, he couldn’t tell at all. His brain wasn’t working right. He didn’t feel anything. If he bumped into a tree, he didn’t notice. He didn’t trip, no matter how fast he ran, how recklessly he swung his limbs. Nothing got in the way of his quest to get the fuck out of these stupid ass trees. And he didn’t get tired. Or hungry. It had to have been at least two days, maybe even longer than that. He remembered sitting down when it got dark again just because he was so overwhelmed with it all, not because he needed to. That was the scariest part. He should’ve had to pee or sleep or something. 

The only thing he knew was that something was very, very wrong.

Finally, after all that time, he heard voices. And splashing? Was it raining? He couldn’t tell. It was cloudy and grey, but he didn’t think it was raining. He followed the voices; obnoxious screaming and laughing. It led him into a yard with a pool. There were half a dozen kids in the pool and two college aged kids standing in front of a grill with more hotdogs than they had people. He didn’t know if there were more people inside or if they were just really hungry, but it honestly didn’t matter. He stood there for a long time and no one noticed him. He was standing right at the edge of the pool and nothing. No one even glanced over at him.

Billy started looking at the people in the pool. Two girls, four boys. One of the boys were black. One looked kind of sickly. One looked like an absolute asshole and the other was bigger and talking a thousand miles a minute about something the asshole guy wasn’t agreeing with. There was a smaller girl who spoke like she didn’t quite know how to talk at all, let alone English. The other girl was a redhead that looked familiar. Really familiar. He knew that he should remember her, but he just couldn’t place where he knew her from. 

He looked over at the older kids. A petite girl with more confidence in her than anyone he’d ever seen. She knew who she was and it radiated all through her. And a boy. The boy was gorgeous, but it became clear in thirty seconds of looking at him interacting with the confident girl that he was about as dumb as a sack of potatoes. Still, Billy couldn’t tear his eyes away from the boy, his brown eyes were huge and gorgeous, his hair was perfect, and his smile was insane.

“Hello?” he spoke loud enough to be heard over the speaker of the boombox in the corner by the doors where they had to run the cord through the inside to give it power. A big house like that should have outlets on the outside as well. It looked new enough that it could have that, but what did he know? His brain was traveling in places he couldn’t follow. It was pissing him off. When he realized no one had even looked over at him when he spoke, he tried again. “Hey!”

Nothing.

Billy wasn’t quiet and he wasn’t nice about it. Someone should have looked at him or flinched or something. Something should have happened when he spoke, but it didn’t. He looked down into the pool at the red-headed girl leaning against the edge across from him. He wanted to remember her so badly. He tuned everything out and just focused on her. Just her, no one else.

She looked stubborn. Whoever was talking to her was about to get a smart ass remark and it showed all over her face. She wore all of her emotions in her eyes and she didn’t care who saw it. She didn’t look mean though. She just wasn’t going to take anyone’s shit for any reason at all. It wasn’t in her to let someone walk all over her. It wasn’t in her to let things go. He didn’t know if these were things he already knew about her or if he was just reading it in her face and body language, but when she threw her arms around the black kid and kissed him right on the lips, fear crawled through his body. He whipped around in terror, thinking Neil would step out of the tree line and snatch her up for it. 

Max. Her name was Max and he had to protect her no matter what. It was terrifying to only know those two precise things about a person, but that’s all Billy had.

“Max!” he screamed as loud as he could and something happened. She jumped away from the boy she was kissing and looked all around like his voice had come from above and not directly in front of her where he had been standing the whole time. He needed to get to her. He didn’t care about any of the kids in the pool. He didn’t care about anything. He needed to get to Max and keep her safe. 

Billy stepped over the edge of the pool, sinking into the water like he was made for it. It didn’t occur to him that he didn’t make a splash, that the ripples caused by his sinking could be mistaken from a tiny pebble being blown into the pool by the wind. It didn’t register that he passed the rest of the kids, their voices blurring into one sound that didn’t make any sense. He pushed the sound away and looked at Max who finally looked like she was looking at him. She looked like she was going to cry. Every step he took was heavier and harder and he found that he was sinking. He couldn’t float like he had. He knew how to swim. He could swim before he could walk. He was better than a fucking fish, but he couldn’t now. It was slowly going to swallow him whole. He kept getting lower and lower and then he couldn’t see anything at all. It was dark and it was silent and he was drowning all alone for what felt like years it felt like until there was just… nothing.

Billy woke up with a gasp.


	2. aftermath

Adjusting to normal life again wasn’t as simple as it had been the last two times. The first time, he had Nancy to help him through it. He would crawl into her room almost every other night and sleep next to her just to keep the nightmares away. She never seemed to be affected by the monster, she was always just sad that Barb was gone which Steve completely understood, but there was just a small part of him that wondered if she was a little bit nutty if the monster didn’t affect her. He just stayed as far away from the pool as he could just in case and if he caught a flash of red hair every once in a while, he blamed it on the light.

The second time was terrible. He had no one. No Nancy, no Tommy, no friends, no family, no one. He had Dustin and the kids, sure, but he could never burden them with the weight of the problems they already had. He was supposed to be the strong one. He was the one that was far too stupid to be affected by the Upside Down, but he was. 

He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t think. He was barely making the cut at school, worse than normal. Before, he was at least average. He only graduated because his algebra teacher was generous enough to give him an A on his last test when they both knew he got an F. It changed his final grade from an F to a D and he barely slid by. He almost didn’t walk just because he didn’t want to. It was one of the rare occasions where Dustin got him to open up about what was eating at him and when he told the kid he wasn’t going to walk, he just looked heartbroken. Steve knew it wouldn’t be the end of the world to waste one evening walking across the basketball court to get a piece of paper if Dustin could feel like a proud little brother for once. He knew what it was like to be an only child and he didn’t want to make Dustin miss out on the opportunity.

It ended up being really fun. Dustin screamed louder than he had ever heard him at that point and it was almost embarrassing, but that was the point, right? To feel like someone loves you so much that they don’t care how loud or weird they are about it? He was grateful to have Dustin, more grateful than he would ever have words for. Steve didn’t know what to do with himself when Dustin went to camp. It had been that fluffy-headed kid that had pointed out the Scoops Ahoy ad in the newspaper and gave Steve the courage to call. Most people didn’t want the job after they heard about the uniform, but Steve didn’t care. He needed a job or his dad was going to take the house away. And he could deal with a lot, but living in his car was not something he could deal with. It was hard enough to keep the feeling of monsters away with multiple walls all around him, but just a car? No. He would lose his mind.

Turns out homelessness wasn’t what would make him lose his mind. It was another fucking monster. It was losing thirty whole people out of his town. Kids, adults, old people, the Mind Fucker whatever it’s name was did not give one single shit about who he was taking. If he did, he would have thought twice about sneaking his way into the body of Billy Hargrove. If anyone could push through that shit through sheer force of will, it would be him. He died protecting Eleven. He died protecting them all. Steve was more affected by Hopper’s death, of course, but it never ceased to amaze him how affected he was by Billy dying. They definitely weren’t friends, but Steve didn’t hate the guy even if he did beat the shit out of him. He was still a person and no one deserved to die, but especially not like that. It bothered him how no one really seemed to care that he was gone. No one but Max. She had even hid a few of his things at Steve's just in case Neil threw his stuff away while she was gone. 

A few months with Max and he understood through bits and fragments that he really shouldn’t have been able to piece together, but everyone got a stroke of genius every now and then and realizing that Billy’s father beat the shit out of him and was a racist piece of shit was Steve’s one and only. He never said anything to anyone about it. He understood why Billy tried to scare Lucas away and even before that he understood why finding his step-sister alone in a house with a bunch of boys when the house was covered in weird ass drawings and the fridge was emptied onto the ground and there were drugs laying around would have sent him over the edge. He didn’t hold any grudges against the guy. If he did, he would have to feel the same about Jonathan and he just didn’t.

Steve’s sleep problems had gotten worse. He wasn’t worried about the tiny demodogs now. Hell, he would be fucking glad to fall through the earth and find a thousand of them down there. What he truly did not want was that fucking thing that was the actual size of Starcourt coming down on him. Every noise scared him worse than ever. Living that close to the woods was seriously starting to wear on him, but he couldn’t choose where his parents paid for him to live. They only had one year left on their mortgage and after that the house belonged to them so they were going to put everything in his name and let him have it. He would probably end up turning around and selling it for a stupid amount of money with just about everything left in it because his parents obviously didn’t care about any of it. 

The kids were older now. Despite the fact that half of them were dating, they weren’t as self concerned as they were the year before. They had grown so much. It seemed like they turned into tiny little versions of adults in the blink of an eye and yeah, Robin called him a mom all the time, but was that such a bad thing? He cared about the kids and he didn’t want anything bad to happen to them. That was another thing. Robin. She was his best friend now. There’s nothing like being tortured and drugged by insane, evil Russians to bring people together. She was the only reason he had gotten the job at the video store. She always made the coffee _just_ right. And she was smart. So fucking smart. He could only hope some of it would rub off on him, but he didn’t think it would. Keith sure as hell didn’t think so, but they were so good at slinging movies that he couldn’t be too angry at him, even if Steve’s taste in movies was apparently 'consistently terrible'.

Robin was always the one organizing everything. She had the brain capacity to know when Mike would be out of town for a family thing or Max had to go to the doctor and things like that. So, when she suggested a pool party while lounging at his house, Steve pushed back the flash of red he saw out of the corner of his eye and agreed on the grounds that he had nothing to do with anything but grilling out. School was going to start again for the brats and Steve didn’t know what he was going to do when they were busy with studying and homework and he wouldn't see them as much. He was pretty sure Robin knew his worries because she made sure they had the whole weekend to hang out. They had both pulled their resources together and took them all to The Hawk; popcorn, candy and sodas. The whole nine yards. 

The next day was the pool party. Everything was fine for hours. They were splashing and having a grand old time. Him and Robin were sipping on beers and shooting the shit. She didn’t want to swim until later and honestly, while the pool was big, it didn’t seem that way with six full grown teenagers in it. It wasn’t the best day. The sky was grey and the wind was blowing a little harder than he wanted, but it wasn’t near enough to cancel the party. It wasn’t raining, it wasn’t unsafe, so the show must go on.

Steve tried his hardest not to look over his shoulder too much. It was one thing to look at the kids, but if he looked in the trees too much, it might freak out the kids and that was the last thing he wanted. Today, more than ever, he felt like something -- someone -- was watching him. It was something he had gotten used to over the course of the past couple years, but today was worse than any other time he could remember.

Goosebumps pushed at the skin on the back of his neck, over his forearms, on his shins. They crawled up his spine until they were just a breath of something long gone in the air. He focused all of his energy on getting the hotdogs from the grill to the tray he had found in a cabinet he never opened because, well, he really never needed to before now. He didn’t want anything to disturb this day. It was the last Sunday before school started. It was their last hurrah.

“Max?!” he heard Lucas calling like she wasn’t standing two feet in front of him.

Max was frozen. Or at least she looked like she was. Staring up into the trees. Steve ignored the hotdogs, handing the tongs to Robin mindlessly as he walked to the edge of the pool where the other kids were starting to crowd around her. He knelt down next to where she was standing and put his hand on her shoulder for a moment. Honestly, he didn’t know what possessed him to, but he moved all of her hair to one shoulder and he wished he hadn’t because he could see the goosebumps all over her, just like they were all over him.

“C’mon, kid,” he said gently, just to her. “Hotdogs are ready. Lets get dried off so your hands don’t make the buns soggy. Don’t want soggy buns, do you?” 

Steve was relieved when she shook off the feeling that Steve couldn’t shake and dunked her head under the water once more before coming back up with a smile. Like nothing at all had happened. She was good at hiding what was hurting her. That was for damn sure. It’s why he kept an eye on her. If he ever noticed a bruise that wasn’t from skateboarding, he would kill Neil and suffer the consequences. He already had a will. Three times fighting monsters? He couldn’t afford not to. He didn’t own very much in this world, but his car went to Dustin if he was still alive after whatever would end up killing Steve, and everything else went to Robin because she would make sure everyone would get the things that would mean the most to them and she would never let anything go to waste. The point was, he would kill Neil and not give a good goddamn what would happen to him after it.

"You have soggy buns," she smiled as she turned around and hopped out of the pool, shaking her hair so it splashed water all over Steve.

He would die for those kids without thinking twice.

The rest of the day went by without any other incidences. They wrapped up the day with fries and milkshakes at the diner. It was really sweet of Robin to adopt the kids with him. He wouldn’t have been able to pay for all of it without her. He wouldn’t have been able to get through any of this without her. Having a friend who truly just liked him for who he was and not what he had or how popular he could make them was something he was used to with the kids, but not used to with people his own age. If he had paid attention to her in high school, things might have been different, but he was just so happy to have her around.

Steve went home alone. He always spent his nights alone. There were a couple times that Robin stayed over just because she didn’t feel like going home just to come right back in the morning, but that was the first time he had had anyone else in the house over night since the night Barb disappeared. Nancy would never come back after that and he couldn’t blame her for it. By the time they split up, Billy had crash landed in town and Tommy H and Carol didn’t want anything to do with him. So, it had just been him.

He didn’t want to be alone tonight though. He wanted to beg Robin to stay, but she had a shift tomorrow and he didn’t so he let her go to her own bed to sleep. He sat on his bed. Right in the middle. As far from all the edges as he could get. He bunched the covers up around him, not letting any of it hang over. He knew monsters didn’t come from under the bed or out of closets, but there was something in his subconscious that made him feel better if nothing could reach him from under the bed to begin with.

Then he started to count. Over and over and over again. He went from one to one hundred. He used to count as high as he could, but he found his mind would wander at a sound and he would have to start over and it would keep him up even longer so he made it simple. One hundred didn’t take a long time, but it didn’t take seconds either. It didn’t matter how many times he counted to it. It wouldn’t make a difference, but it was too complicated to keep track so he just kept it simple.

He was only through maybe three rounds, possibly four, when his radio crackled to life. Steve’s eyes went wide, and he backed himself up against the headboard of his bed while he tried to calm his breathing. It must have just been a power surge or something because almost as soon as it kicked on, it kicked off, and his walkie talkie started behind his head.

“Steve, are you awake?” It was Max. And whether he had been awake or not, he knew the sound of her voice that late at night would wake him up instantly.

It took him a moment to gather the hunk of plastic and metal and pull the antenna up so he could talk to her. They didn’t live too far away so he could always hear her a lot better than he could hear Will or Dustin, but she very rarely called him. “Yeah. I’m up. Are you alright?” he asked, terrified of what she was going to say next. There was so much that could be wrong and he didn’t want her to go through any of it.

“I’m fine. Nothing’s really wrong. I just…” It was quiet for such a long time that Steve checked his battery and wondered if hers had died, but he never let go of it in case she came back. When she did, it was clear she was crying. “I heard Billy today. In the pool. I heard him. I think I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not.” It was one of the only things he knew for certain. “You’re not going crazy. I’ve seen things too. Since Barb died, I’ve seen things. I’ll walk by the back door and see a flash of her hair or that ugly ass coat she was wearing. I know she’s not there, but knowing she’s gone hasn’t made me see her any less. She isn’t gone to me and he isn’t gone to you. You love him and maybe just being in the water made you think of him. Maybe the temperature was just right and all of you splashing around made it feel a little more like the ocean than a pool. Maybe a memory just bled through to reality. You know?”

“Yeah,” she replied shakily. “I miss him. No one else does, but I do.”

“He was lucky to have you as a sister. I know you two had your differences, but I think you both knew how you felt about each other. He loved you more than anything or he wouldn’t have done that to keep you safe.”

“He should still be here.”

“If he was, we wouldn’t be.”

“You’re not supposed to be right.” He could hear the laugh threaten to pass her lips as she spoke. “Thanks, Steve. I feel a lot better. I think I should go to sleep now.”

“I’m always here, kiddo.”

“Will you just... um…”

The air was quiet again and he knew what she was trying to say. “Yeah, Max. I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Thank you.” She sounded so relieved that it made his heart ache just a little around the edges.

They said their goodbyes and Steve started counting again. He kept getting distracted, thinking of the conversation with Max. What if he started seeing blond _and_ red together? He didn’t think he could handle that, but if it kept Max okay, then he would deal with it. Just to clear his own mind, he got up out of bed and made his way to the window. He knew he wasn’t going to find anything, but he peeked through the blinds anyway. Scanning the treeline, looking for anything human shaped. He didn’t see anything at all until he glanced at the pool. 

There wasn’t anything on god’s green earth that could have prepared him for what he saw there. The shape of Billy standing at the bottom of his pool. Just standing there like he didn’t even realize he wasn’t standing on solid ground. Steve took a step back and grabbed the cord that went to the blinds, yanking it up as fast as he could.

Nothing.

Of course there was nothing. He was exhausted and Max had just told him she heard the ghost of her brother in his pool so yeah, that’s what his mind was going to do to him tonight.

Steve let the blind back down and moved back to his bed where he started counting again. It didn’t take too much longer that night for him to fall asleep, but the nightmares were what kept him exhausted, more than the lack of hours he would sleep at a time.

When Steve woke up the next morning, it was with a scream.


	3. same lips red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> billy is figuring things out.

Blue eyes opened. There was no way to know how much time had passed. All he knew was if he went home after however much time had now passed, he would definitely get the beating of a lifetime. No matter when he went home Neil would beat on him until the old bastard couldn’t feel his own hands so he just kept laying there, surrounded by trees, surrounded by the colors of fall. Every once in a while, the soft wind would blow just right and a yellow leaf would slip slowly to the ground. For a few moments, it reminded Billy of bubbles, how they didn’t always just sink right to the ground. Sometimes they would dip just a little and then there would be some invisible force -- Billy knew deep down it was the wind, but he always imagined it was something more -- that would reach down and guide it back up just for a breath before it slipped back down to the ground. 

It was starting to get dark again when Billy had finally had enough and sat up. He was going to have to get home. It wasn’t cold yet. There was still enough green left in the trees to show the life left in the earth. 

Things came back to him as he wandered through the woods. He remembered why there were no sequoias, no absolutely giant trees. He wasn't in California anymore. Neil had moved them across the country. They lived in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by smaller trees than he was used to and a whole bunch of hicks. He had a stepmom and stepsister whose names he couldn’t think of but he could see their faces. He could see them sitting at the table, having the time of their lives while he was out running around town. Dinners when he stayed home hadn’t been that cheerful. 

And honestly, as long as he wasn’t hungry or cold, he shouldn’t have to go back. There wouldn’t be any reason for him to. His father had never been happier with a wife that will take her punishments quietly and a perfect daughter, Neil didn’t need his fuck up son in his life. 

\---

There was that house again. The one with the pool. He remembered seeing his stepsister here. He remembered the pool. He didn’t know how he got from the pool back to the woods, but that didn’t really matter now because this time, the backyard was empty but the doors were open wide.

Billy was cautious as he approached, calling out a ‘hello’ to try and announce that someone was around. No one answered and he was kind of worried that something was wrong. All the windows were closed from what Billy could see from the back of the house and glancing in, he could see the front door was closed as well. He didn’t see anyone in the immediate vicinity but he couldn’t shake the feeling that this just wasn’t right. 

It was almost completely dark outside now and every light in the house was on. He could see light through every window from the backyard and as he leaned in, he could tell there wasn’t a single switch that wasn’t flipped on. Even for the weirdos around here, leaving your door wide open was too strange. 

“Hello?! If you don’t answer me, I’m coming in!” He yelled a little louder. Silence. “You leave me no choice!” He made his way into the house, checking the kitchen first. He had already seen into the living room from the back door and he hadn’t seen anyone in there. Every door in the house was open, even the closets. That didn’t make any damn sense either. He felt like he was walking into a trap or a horror movie or both. 

There was a bathroom and a den that were both empty. The closets didn’t have anything unusual in them. He was totally not about to go in the basement because fuck that. He would leave that for last if he didn’t find anything upstairs. 

The house was huge, much bigger than it seemed like it would be. The high ceilings could have something to do with that but it could also be the fact that everything was so pristine. Like they spent their whole lives cleaning every inch. Or like no one lived here at all and it was all for appearances. In fact, it did look like no one lived here. It was far too spotless. Billy felt stupid now as he made his way up the stairs. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to find anyone. Despite all the lights being on, it didn’t seem like anyone was home. The house was silent. Eerily so. 

Billy peered into the first room. It seemed like the only room with a bit of life in it. Trophies, an unmade bed, clothes in the hamper and a couple posters on the wall. Still no humans in it though. The next room was a bathroom. Still no one. Two more bedrooms, one with an ensuite, and a hall closet were all empty. There was only one more door and just as Billy was about to enter it, he heard the most terrifying  _ snap! _ of his life. 

Blue eyes shifted down to see a bear trap wrapped around his leg and just as he registered the fact that there was a goddamn bear trap inside this pristine house, there was a boy swinging a bat at him. He ducked, but not enough that he should’ve gotten away scot-free. The bat lodged in the wall and Billy stumbled back, falling straight on his ass when he realized the bat was full of nails and that’s how it was stuck to the wall. 

The boy looked just as surprised as Billy felt, but he didn’t seem to pay any attention to Billy at all. He just looked down at the trap, poking it with the end of the bat. Now, Billy recalled that he had been trapped in that thing not fifteen seconds before but his leg was free, each foot on either side of the trap, no blood, no torn jeans, nothing out of place. But he had seen it. He saw the trap around his leg. He stepped on it. He had to or it wouldn’t have snapped shut. 

As he inspected the rest of himself, trying to find a reason to all of this mess, he remembered that bat again. Being held by a fuzzy version of his stepsister who’s name he still couldn’t quite get a grasp on. He remembered her bringing it down way too close to the prized jewels and looking terrifyingly serious as she screamed at him. He didn’t remember what she was screaming or why. He didn’t remember why she had the bat or where they were. The house didn’t look familiar. He couldn’t even be sure it was a house. There were papers all over the place. It didn’t make any sense.

None of this made any goddamn sense!

There was another  _ snap!  _ and Billy jumped at the noise before realizing it was just the other boy setting the trap again before going into the room again. Billy was careful as he followed him in this time, making sure to step far over the trap and keeping his eyes out for more.   
  
“Umm… hello?” he said, scratching at the back of his head awkwardly. “Thanks for all your concern and shit. I’m fine. Thanks.”

He was still being ignored and Billy just couldn’t wrap his head around that. If a stranger walked into his house, he would beat them first and ask questions later, but this guy was just acting like it was the most normal thing in the world. Billy was standing right in front of him and he was acting like he couldn’t even see him.    
  
If he had any idea what the fuck was going on, actually, no if Billy had been back in Cali, he probably would’ve had no problem at all hitting on this boy. He sure as hell wouldn’t do it in Middle of Nowhere, Indiana, but he never had any trouble in his hometown. He felt invincible there. And this boy was just his type. Pretty and soft. Even with a bat full of nails and a bear trap, he didn’t look dangerous at all. He looked like he would blow right over if Billy touched him. 

Billy leaned down a bit to be level with where Pretty Boy was sitting on the edge of the bed and reached his hand out to wave it right in front of his face. Nothing. Not even a flinch. “What the fuck is your problem, dude?” he snapped, standing up straight again. Despite the fact that all of the windows were closed, Pretty Boy’s perfect hair moved a bit like a gust of wind had moved right over him. He seemed to notice it too, but at that same moment there was a crackling noise that made both Billy and Pretty Boy jump.    
  
_ “We’re all safe and sound at Joyce’s for the night. Can’t believe you didn’t come. She wants to take a moment to remember all the dead people -- ow! Jesus! -- all of the people who passed on unexpectedly. And since you’re not here we’ll have to do it this way.”  _ It was a walkie talkie that had been on the bed next to Pretty Boy that Billy hadn’t noticed until now.

Pretty Boy sighed as he picked up the hunk of plastic and metal and fell back onto the bed, holding it above his face as he spoke into it. “Isn’t that all we ever do?” he asked.

That crackling sound filled the room again and Billy moved to stand to the side more since he couldn’t see Pretty Boy’s pretty face anymore.

_ “It’s different tonight and you know it.”  _ It was a woman’s voice this time.  _ “Humble an old lady, won’t you?”  _ __   
__   
Pretty Boy smiled and it was the most beautiful thing Billy had ever seen in his entire life. His eyes crinkled up in the corners and legitimately sparkled with happiness. Billy thought he was going to swoon at the sight.

“It’s different. I know. Go ahead. Sorry.”

It’s quiet for a long time. Billy wonders if this ‘old lady’ was just fucking with Pretty Boy, but then names start coming out. Names he didn’t recognize. Names that didn’t mean a damn thing to Billy, but it seemed to affect Steve greatly. With each name his smile shrank more and his eyes filled with tears.    
  
_ “Benny Hammond. Barb Holland. Bob Newby. Bruce Lowe.” _ __   
  


Billy was starting to fear for people whose names started with ‘B’. It seemed like they all died around here.    
  
_ “Jim Hopper. Billy Hargrove. Doctor Alexei. ” _ __   
__   
Pretty Boy let out a sob that he just couldn’t hold back anymore and Billy froze as he watched him. 

_ “Mews. D’Art. The Russian Scientist guy that Dustin tased to death even though I don’t think he should be included in this. Heather, Tom and Janet Holloway…” _ __   
__   
The names faded away because he just couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The lady said his name. Why in the hell would she say his name? He wasn’t dead. He was right here. The names just kept coming and coming and Billy was just so confused. The lady seemed like she was going to talk forever, but finally after too long, it was quiet other than Steve’s crying.

This was stupid. He wasn’t dead. He was standing right there! “Hey!” Billy said, stepping forward towards the bed. “I’m not fucking dead. I’m standing right here.” He reached out to wipe the tears from Pretty Boy’s eyes, but nothing happened. His hand didn’t actually touch him, the tears didn’t go away, Pretty Boy didn’t flinch, didn’t move, nothing. “Hey! Fucking talk to me, you prick!” he yelled. Nothing. No reaction at all. Absolutely nothing.    
  


A familiar voice took over. Max. That was her name. Max.  _ “I know he was an asshole, but he was my brother. No one knows that he was a hero but us. He doesn’t get memorialized like Hopper does so we have to remember him twice as hard. Billy saved us all... “ _ __   
__   
She was saying more. He knew she kept talking, but he couldn’t hear her. He was sinking again. Billy reached out for Pretty Boy, trying to hold on. He didn’t want to go. He had to figure out what the fuck was going on. “No!” he screamed as loud as he could. He was slipping through the floor when he saw Pretty Boy bolt upright, looking over like he had actually heard him this time. It was too late. Billy slipped straight through the floor, down through the floor of the living room, down into the black. 


End file.
